


Mechanical Twilight Zone

by DarkDanc3r



Series: Driving Crazy [2]
Category: The Fast and the Furious (2001), Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, POV Alternating, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-07 21:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20823827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkDanc3r/pseuds/DarkDanc3r
Summary: Cars do funny things when they're actually sentient.  And car 643 was about to become the sole focus of Brian’s life.





	Mechanical Twilight Zone

**Author's Note:**

> ~~ = POV Change

"This has _got_ to be a joke."

Brian O'Connor stared at the black Mustang sitting innocently in the early morning sunlight and wondered how he'd acquired so much bad karma. The Mustang's glossy black frame was free of dents, scuff marks and dirt, resembling a show-room model rather than a police vehicle. He ran a hand along the hood as he walked towards the driver's side door, noting that the metal was still cool from Nevada's cooler desert nights. Hopefully, that meant that the car's interior was still cool, rather than the oven it would no doubt become as the day progressed.

After a quick check to verify that the doors were actually locked, he fished the keys from the pocket he'd stuffed them into. Lacking the remote fob he was used to, he had to put the key in the door lock, but no matter which way he turned it, the doors refused to unlock. He glanced around the quickly-emptying lot again for another Ford vehicle – or some of his new coworkers laughing at him – but found none of either.

"Now wonder they assigned me this car." He muttered irritably, glaring at the door. "You're probably a scrap heap under that fancy paint job." He turned the key again, just to be sure, and was surprised when the locks popped easily. Before his luck could change he pulled the door open and slid into the seat. The interior of the vehicle was upholstered in black, but it was still blissfully cool. Though he'd had trouble getting into the car, it started up beautifully, engine rumbling to life with a purr that reminded Bri of some of the street racers from L.A.. He vowed to get a look under the hood at some point in the near future and flicked the police radio on, scanning for the right channel when he didn't immediately hear dispatch directing the other officers to their locations.

There were more channels to surf through than he was used to, and when he did finally find the right one he was astounded by the sound quality. Normally, even the best radios were a wee bit distorted, but the dispatcher might as well have been in the same room, she was so clear. He gave his ID and waited to get his directions, only to be pleasantly surprised when he was put in one of the high-traffic locations. Most days, an assignment like that was hell, but if he did catch a speeder it might give him a chance to open the engine up a little and see what she could do.

He acknowledged the assignment and pulled out of the lot, listening intently to the engine as he drove. His time setting up for the undercover assignment in L.A. hadn't gone to waste, and he'd learned even more about engines by working at Harry's and with Toretto. Along the quiet stretch between the station and his spot, he listened for problems, but the engine purled like a perfectly tuned racing engine. It made him **really** want to see what was under that hood.

He settled into an abandoned parking lot where he'd be able to go after speeders no matter which direction they were headed, and flicked on the radar. While it ran up to readiness, he adjusted the volume on the radio and settled in to wait, one ear on the radio and one eye on the radar while his mind wandered back to the time he'd spent with Toretto, and the hell that had followed his 'betrayal' of the force.

~~

'You're probably a scrap heap under that fancy paint job.'

_I am not._ Actually being addressed – however indirectly – was enough to pull Prowl from stasis, and his first thought was to object to the insult that could've come from The Twins. Seconds later a key was slid into his lock again and he let his doors unlock, waiting to see if he would be addressed again. When nothing more was said to him, he allowed the organic to continue in whatever it was doing, certain that it was incapable of doing anything that he wouldn't be able to fix.

Conscious of how much damage remained to be dealt with, Prowl put himself into recharge, not willing to risk stasis any longer than necessary. In recharge, at least, he'd be distantly aware of his surroundings and more capable of reacting if the need arose.

~~

The next several weeks were a study in frustration and confusion for Brian. He understood better now why they'd assigned him 643 – the damned thing was haunted.

And out to get him.

For the first week that he drove the Saleen Mustang, it went through gas faster than the Supra at Race Wars. It got to the point where the Chief was threatening to take the cost for each tank of gas out of his paycheck. A week after that threat, the car practically stopped using gas; or so it seemed to Bri. The meter dropped at a crawl, which made the Chief demand to know if he was buying gas somewhere else. Brian wasn't even sure which was worse, anymore – the implication that he was racing when he wasn't (not that he didn't want to), or the suggestion that he was breaking fueling rules when he wasn't doing that either.

Other than the fuel problem, the rest of the behavior seemed to be to his benefit, at least on the surface. He never had to scan for the day's dispatch channel after that first morning, though if he did go scanning through channels he picked up radio traffic that should've been impossible to listen in on. He heard military communications and trucker CB conversations, actual music stations and something that sounded like a dial-up modem on the fritz. When he came across that last, it took some fiddling to switch channels again, and after the third time it happened, he just decided to leave the radio on the dispatch channel and leave the surfing for the actual radio. He had a greater range of choices there, too, but that didn't bother him nearly as much; not when he was nearly as fond of music as he was of playing at designing paint jobs.

Just as odd were the car's reactions to the local weather. More than once he came out of the precinct after dropping off paperwork to find the windows rolled up against an unexpected rain. The wipers would turn on by themselves before he could even reach for them, even though he **knew** that Mustangs didn't have that particular sensor built in. When mornings started out particularly hot, he'd go to the car expecting it to be broiling only to find the windows down to allow what breeze there was to keep the interior at least tolerable until he could get in and get the AC going.

He was starting to wonder if he'd landed in the mechanical version of the Twilight Zone.

~~

Increasingly, Prowl regained an awareness of his surroundings, and began to synch his schedule to 'his' organic's – the human male designated Brian O'Connor, law enforcement officer attached to the Mission City Police Department. It pleased Prowl to know that he was working with a law enforcement officer, even if said officer did not yet know that he drove a sentient being. For the time being, Prowl was willing to let things continue that way – passively he'd take in his surroundings while Officer O'Connor was with him - he'd recharge when he was alone - and just stay 'under the radar' in case there were any Decepticons in the area.

As more of his sensors were repaired – a job that, thankfully, required time more than fuel (he still felt bad for using so much of the organics' fuel while his major repairs were in progress) – he became aware of the atmospheric phenomena known as weather, and began to realize how this 'weather' affected his human. Not to mention the fact that moisture in his interior was an annoyance that ranked up there with The Twins and rock particles in his joints. If his windows were down when precipitation began to descend, he'd put them up, dismissing his human's surprise and apparent confusion the first few times it happened. Similarly, he picked up on the difficulty the precipitation – know to the humans as 'rain' – created in acquiring a clear visual on any approaching obstacles. After monitoring O'Connor's use of the wipers, he began to anticipate the need for them and would begin to sweep rain from his windshield before his officer could even reach for the control. He also did his best to tweak his forward sensor net, so that he could react to an unexpected obstacle before it could pose a threat.

Once he patched together another level of his crippled communications gear, he began accessing the humans' information network. Acquiring access was pathetically easy, but he restricted his access to unsecured networks, preferring to avoid the possibility of being noticed while logged on.

Arranging his priorities as best he could, he focused first on finding information on humans: their strengths and weaknesses, environmental requirements, and behavior information. The sheer lack of definite information about that last dismayed Prowl on a tactical level, but without the storage and processing capabilities of Cybertronians, he had to admit that humanity had a significantly weaker ability to record such information consistently. Environmental needs, at least, seemed to be easy enough to handle, even if there was a greater range of variation than he was used to. Intense heat and cold were bad – he began rolling down his windows and silently running internal blowers to keep his internal temperature from climbing to a dangerous level. If his human was caught in the rain for a long period of time, he would subtly run the heat to dry out his human's clothing and prevent the possibility of chills. He even regulated the volume from his speakers, stubbornly ignoring his human's attempts to turn it up past what Prowl considered to be a safe volume.

One thing he and Brian did seem to have in common, however, was speed. Prowl didn't quite understand the reason for the low 'speed limit' signs he kept seeing, but he could feel his human's dislike for the slowness of such limits. However much he might've hated holding Prowl back, though, seemed equally matched by how much absolute glee he expressed whenever he caught another human breaking those limits. In fact, catching said humans seemed to be the only task assigned to his human, and, therefore, himself. Prowl felt it was a waste of his abilities – and, he suspected, Brian's – but he had yet to actually find a reason to reveal himself.

Instead, he turned his not inconsiderable speed over to Brian's practiced hands, easily providing his human driver with the speed necessary to catch his prey no matter the rate at which the law-breaker traveled. Even before Prowl had woken enough to actively assist Brian, the officer's catch rate had been high. Once Prowl woke and threw his attention to providing Brian with the best handling available (and somewhat beyond) of his form, the human's record soared. Every chase resulted in a law-breaker brought to some form of justice. Better still, those who seemed most recklessly desperate to get away generally ended up being the ones transporting illegal substances. Prowl felt even more justified in bringing these humans to justice. More than once Prowl found himself anxious over Brian's safety when a runaway driver drew a weapon on his officer, but so far Brian's quick, cool handling of the situation (and his bullet-resistant body armor) kept him from harm and allowed him to at least direct other officers to take over the chase, if he did not manage it himself.

~~

Brian was finally getting used to his vehicle's peculiarities. He took the minor weather control for granted, could ignore the volume lock on the radio, and had even gotten vaguely comfortable with the car's ability to swerve around various squirrels and other animals before Brian himself could register them. His bust rate had never been higher, and that had to do with the car too. No car should have been able to go **that** fast without NOS, and he certainly never felt the acceleration he knew should've flattened him to the seat when he gunned it after a speeder doing 70 through downtown.

The number of collars he brought in started drawing attention of both the positive and negative varieties. The Mayor had expressed – quietly – his gratitude at the amount of drugs kept off his streets. In view of the Mayor, the Police Chief had to agree; at the precinct, he was one of many who voiced suspicions about Brian's links to dealers who wanted competitors off the streets. One of the Lieutenants demanded the keys to the car, no doubt expecting to find it modded somehow, or equipped with some sort of device that he could use to signal people. When he actually took the car out, he had 'the most uncomfortable ride of his life', as he called it. Brian, who was used to the absolutely silk-smooth ride he usually got, suspected that the car didn't like the Lieutenant either. The thought amused the hell out of him but he kept his mirth well hidden in the face of the chewing-out he received, courtesy of the pissed-off Lieutenant who couldn't actually pin any inappropriate behavior on him. When he got his keys back and went out on patrol, the ride was still every bit as smooth as he remembered it being.

Things continued that way for most of a year before the car did something **really** bizarre. He'd been heading towards his assignment, passing one of the busier shopping centers in the city, when suddenly he had the steering wheel jerked out of his hands as the car did a sharp 90 degree turn and tore off down a side street. He jumped when the sirens started wailing, but the officer in him appreciated how it made people get out of the way, while the rest of him was alternately marveling over the car's handling and gibbering in shock at the complete lack of control he had. As they crossed into the warehouse district, Brian realized that he was being followed – chased, really – by a yellow car (a Camaro, a tiny working portion of his brain identified) with black racing stripes. When the two vehicles stuck to a straight path long enough to let Brian actually study his pursuer, he realized that there were two teenagers inside – and they looked just as surprised at the situation as he felt.

Concern for the kids involved overrode his fear for his own hide, and he thumped the dash, trying to regain control of the car before something seriously nasty happened. No matter what he tried – jerking the steering wheel, stomping on the brakes, throwing the e-break – none of it worked; though he earned himself a truly awful shriek of metal when he pulled the e-break.

Out of nowhere, the car swerved, crashing **through** a cargo door into an abandoned warehouse, and halfway across the debris-littered floor the car swung into a tight circle, throwing boxes and god-knew-what out of the area while at the same time bleeding off a shit-tonne of speed. Before he could register what was happening, his seatbelt clicked open, and just before the door opened wide – sling-shotting him out into the cleared circle of concrete floor – he heard a voice apologizing for the necessity but only realized that part later. Brian did his best to control the fall and rolled to a crouch, bruised and covered in dirt as soon as he stopped moving and watched as the car skidded to a stop between him and the yellow and black vehicle. The yellow car squealed to a stop, letting its passengers out in a much more controlled manner before darting forward and..

…turning into a giant robot that charged his…

…giant black robot…

Shit.


End file.
